Published by an old curmudgeon who came to America in 1936 as a refugee from Nazi Germany and proudly served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He is a former law enforcement officer and a retired professor of criminal justice who, in 1970, founded the Texas Narcotic Officers Association. BarkGrowlBite refuses to be politically correct.
(Copyrighted articles are reproduced in accordance with the copyright laws of the U.S. Code, Title 17, Section 107.)

Saturday, July 31, 2010

I’m sure that by now, all of you have read or heard about the three people who were attacked by a grizzly bear while camping in Yellowstone Park. Unfortunately, one of those campers was killed. The rogue bear was accompanied by her three cubs during the attacks.

Now I agree that the mother bear is going to have to be put down. And I understand that the three clubs cannot be allowed to roam free in the park anymore because they have now learned to hunt humans from their mother. But do the three cubs have to be put down like the mother bear?

Isn’t there a better alternative for the cubs? Surely there must be some zoos in the U.S. or in Europe that would want to put one or more of the cubs on exhibit. I know that grizzly bears cubs grow up to be large and dangerous, but so do lion and tiger cubs and there are plenty of them and other dangerous animals on exhibit in zoos.

‘DEPORTED IN SHACKLES: U.S. COUPLE ACCUSED OF KILLING SEVEN PEOPLE SENT TO FACE JUSTICE IN PANAMA

Mail OnlineJuly 30, 2010

A couple were deported in shackles from Nicaragua to Panama yesterday to face charges of killing two Americans.

The pair, identified by US authorities as William Cortez and his wife, Jane, will also be questioned in connection with the disappearances of five more people.

Cortez, who claimed his name was William Dathan Holbert - a suspect featured on the America's Most Wanted website - was arrested in Nicaragua with his wife.

Prosecutors allege the American couple preyed on residents in the scenic coastal region of Bocas del Toro, in what President Ricardo Martinelli termed 'one of the first cases of serial murders' in the Central American country.

'He picked out his victims after making their acquaintance,' Assistant Prosecutor Angel Calderon told reporters.

'Knowing that nobody would ask about them, he got rid of them.'

The two are charged with killing Cheryl Lynn Hughes, 53, a St. Louis, Missouri-native who lived in Panama for 10 years, and Bo Icelar, understood to be the former owner of a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The Assistant Prosecutor said witnesses had come forward after the bodies of Ms Hughes and Mr Icelar were dicovered last week in shallow graves.

They were found buried behind a hotel run by Cortez in Bocas del Toro.

Investigators in Panama say the killings may have been part of a scheme to steal property on the Caribbean archipelago which is popular with expatriates.

Friends and relatives said Ms Hughes owned a hotel which she wanted to sell. Cortez reportedly took it over after she disappeared in March.

Police found her body after her estranged husband, Keith Werle, persuaded them to search the hotel.

Mr Werle, who also lives in Panama, said Cortez claimed to have bought the property, telling people Ms Hughes had left the area without saying where she was going.

But he became suspcious when Cortez's accounts of the transaction did not add up, he said.

He then realised Cortez also owned property that had belonged to Mr Icelar.

The couple moved to Panama together 10 years ago and married after five years. 'If she had met someone and moved on or something she would have thrown that in my face,' he said.

And he said several of her dogs, her passport and other items were found at the hotel during the police search last week.

It was one of the dogs which led police to Ms Hughes' body in a wooded area behind the house, he added - just hours before officers discovered a second body, identified as Mr Icelar.

The gallery owner had also been trying to sell his property in Panama to move back to the United States, his longtime friend, Sharon McConnell said.

She became suspicious after Mr Icelar stopped answering his phone on November 30.

Learning Cortez had bought the property, she left numerous messages asking about her friend's whereabouts. But her calls were never returned.

Eventually she asked a friend of his in Panama to report him missing.

Assistant Director of Investigations Omar Pinzon said Cortez and his wife faced charges of 'crimes against the life and personal integrity' of the victims and would be questioned about the disappearance of five more people - reportedly three Americans and two Panamanian workers.

According to the America's Most Wanted article, William Dathan Holbert was involved in a similar scheme of taking over a house in North Carolina. The article cites police as saying the man travelled under different identities.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Francis Albert Sinatra (1915-1998) may have been one of America's most famous Italian Catholics, but he kept the Jewish people and the State of Israel close to his heart, manifesting life-long commitments to fighting anti-Semitism and to activism on behalf of Israel .

Sinatra stepped forward in the early 1940s, when big names were needed to rouse America into saving Europe's remaining Jews, and he sang at an "Action for Palestine " rally (1947). He sat on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center ; and he donated over $1 million to Jerusalem's Hebrew University , which honored him by dedicating the Frank Sinatra International Student Center . (The Center made heartbreaking headlines when terrorists bombed it in 2002, killing nine people.)

As the result of his support for the Jewish State, his movies and records were banned in several Arab countries.

Sinatra helped Teddy Kollek, later the long-serving Mayor of Jerusalem but then a member of the Haganah, by serving as a $1 million money-conduit that helped Israel win the war.

The Copacabana Club, which was very much run and controlled by the same Luciano-related New York mafia crowd with whom Sinatra had become enmeshed, happened to be next door to the hotel out of which Haganah members were operating. In his autobiography, Kollek relates how, trying in March 1948 to circumvent an arms boycott imposed by President Harry Truman on the Jewish fighters in Eretz Yisroel, he needed to smuggle about $1 million in cash to an Irish ship captain docked in the Port of New York . The young Kollek spotted Sinatra at the bar and, afraid of being intercepted by Federal agents, asked for help. In the early hours of the morning, the singer went out the back door with the money in a paper bag and successfully delivered it to the pier.

The origins of Sinatra's love affair with the Jewish people are not clear but, for years, the Hollywood icon wore a small mezuzah around his neck, a gift from Mrs. Golden, an elderly Jewish neighbor who cared for him during his boyhood in Hoboken, N.J. (years later, he honored her by purchasing a quarter million dollars' worth of Israel bonds).

He protected his Jewish friends, once responding to an anti-Semitic remark at a party by simply punching the offender. Time magazine reported that Sinatra walked out on the christening of his own son when the priest refused to allow a Jewish friend to be the godfather. As late as 1979, he raged over the fact that a Palm Springs cemetery official in California declared that he could not arrange the burial of a deceased Jewish friend over the Thanksgiving holiday; Sinatra again -- threatened to punch him in the nose.

Sinatra famously played the role of a Jewish pilot in Cast a Giant Shadow, the 1966 film filmed in Israel and starring friend Kirk Douglas as Mickey Marcus, the Jewish-American colonel who fought and died in Israel's war for independence (Sinatra dive-bombs Egyptian tanks with seltzer bottles!) He donated his salary for the part to the Arab-Israeli Youth Center in Nazareth , and he also made a significant contribution to the making of Genocide, a film about the Holocaust, and helped raise funds for the film.

Less known is Sinatra in Israel (1962), a short 45-minute featurette he made in which he sang In the Still of the Night and Without a Song. He also starred in The House I Live In (1945), a ten-minute short film made to oppose anti-Semitism at the end of World War II, which received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.

Two stories making the headlines turn out to be nothing more than a lot of malarkey.

INJUNCTION AGAINST ARIZONA, BUT NOT ON CONSTITUTIONAL GROUNDS

A federal judge has issued an injunction that blocks key parts of Arizona’s new immigration law. She ruled that cops could not be required to stop a person to ascertain if he was an illegal and the state could not require people to carry papers showing they were here legally. She did not base her decision on constitutional grounds, but rather on the likelihood that enforcement of the new law would swamp the federal authorities with so many immigration cases that it would detract from their ability to fight crime and terrorism.

Arizona’s governor announced the state would immediately appeal that decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Lots of luck there. The 9th Circuit sits in San Fransicko and is the most liberal federal appeals court in the U.S. Arizona’s immigration law will eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Its ruling will be based strictly on constitutional grounds because of the nine justices, only four are liberals.

In the meantime the ACLU’s ‘rogue sheriff’ says SO WHAT. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies have been arresting illegal immigrants for the past three years and the sheriff says they will continue to do so, the court’s injunction notwithstanding. Good for good old Sheriff Joe!

SENTENCING FOR CRACK COCAINE REDUCED BUT WILL NOT CHANGE THE DISPROPORTIONATE NUMER OF BLACKS IN PRISON

Congress has passed a bill - which the president most certainly will sign – that will change the disparity in the sentencing between the possession of crack cocaine and powder cocaine. For the past 25 years under federal law, if you got caught with five or more grams of crack, you faced a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. The law was changed so that it will now take at least 28 grams (one ounce) of crack to get you those five years. And the new bill does away with mandatory minimum sentences.

The new law was passed because liberals and black civil rights groups screamed that the mandatory minimum five gram-five years law was the main cause for the disproportionate number of young black men in prison. Do those do-gooders really believe that the new law will reduce the disproportionate number of young black men in prison? I’ve got news for them – it ain’t!

And what about the distribution of crack cocaine? Is the result of the new law going to be that young black men will be peddling only 27 grams? No way Jose! They’re not dumb drug dealers. Minutes after they’ve sold out, they’ll be back on the same street corner with another 27 grams, etc., etc. They’ll be selling just as much crack as before - or maybe even more if they’re not sent to prison.

Blacks will continue to dominate the crack cocaine market. Whites aren’t going to be selling it. A disproportionate number of blacks will continue to populate our prisons, but not because of crack. It’s because they commit a disproportionate number of serious crimes. In 2009 for instance, based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York City, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults.

Non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, committed only 5 percent of New York’s violent crimes in 2009, 1.4 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies. That’s why there are so many blacks in prison. Liberals and black civil rights groups are going to keep right on screaming because the new crack cocaine law is not going to change any of that.

Chris Christie, New Jersey’s tough tax cutting, budget slashing Republican governor and many Italian-Americans are unhappy with the TV show ‘Jersey Shore.’ I can understand why. To paraphrase what a former Houston police chief said about Yankees, ‘New Yorkers are like hemorrhoids. When they move down south (to New Jersey), they’re a real pain in the ass and the pain doesn’t go away until they move back up north.’

NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR NOT A FAN OF ‘JERSEY SHORE’Gov. Chris Christie says show is negative, features a ‘bunch of New Yorkers’

Associated PressJuly 25, 2010

TRENTON, N.J. — "Jersey Shore" may have many fans, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie isn't among them.

During an appearance Sunday on ABC's "This Week," host Jake Tapper asked Christie if he thought the MTV program — which focuses on the escapades of a group of hard-partying 20-something Italian-Americans at a shore house — was positive or negative for his state.

Christie said the show is negative, and it "takes a bunch of New Yorkers, drops them at the Jersey Shore and tries to make America feel like this is New Jersey."

Many Italian-American groups have said the show is offensive and relies on crude stereotypes.

The governor says anyone who wants to learn about "the real New Jersey" should visit and see what the state has to offer.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The ‘50-shot barrage’ may seem out of line, but it was not! When a cop fears that his life is in imminent danger, he will shoot and continue shooting until he feels the threat to his life has been eliminated. On the surface though – to the uninitiated it does look bad.

NEW YORK CITY SETTLES FOR $7.15M IN SEAN BELL POLICE SHOOTINGBy John Marzulli and Bill Hutchinson

NY Daily NewsJuly 27, 2010

The city agreed Tuesday to pay more than $7 million to settle a wrongful death civil suit lodged by the fiancée and pals of Sean Bell, the unarmed black groom gunned down by cops on his wedding day, sources said.

The settlement, approved by a Brooklyn federal magistrate, ends a four-year legal battle by tragic would-be bride Nicole Paultre Bell and two men wounded in a 50-shot barrage that claimed her lover's life.

Under the agreement, the city will pay $3.25 million to Sean Bell's family estate, which is controlled by Paultre Bell. Bell's pals Joseph Guzman, 35, who was shot 11 times in the incident, will receive $3 million and Trent Benefield, 27, who was shot three times, will be granted $900,000.

"I believe the settlement is fair," said Paultre Bell, the mother of Bell's two daughters, Jada, 7, and Jordyn, 4. "No amount of money can provide closure for losing Sean. I don't think there will ever be closure."

"What's important is my fight doesn't end now," she said, vowing to continue to push state legislatures to pass a package of laws to reform the Civilian Complaint Review Board, require drug testing when cops fire their guns and ban arrest quotas.

Guzman said he is still suffering from the shooting that fueled minority concerns that cops are too quick on the draw in their neighborhoods.

"I got a metal rod in my leg. I have four bullets still in me," he said, standing in front of Brooklyn Federal Court with Paultre Bell and their lawyer Sanford Rubenstein. "I don't think a black or Hispanic man's life means much in this city. It will happen again."

Guzman and Benefield, who is black, were in a car with Bell when undercover cops opened fire on them outside the Club Kalua strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006, hours before Bell was to get married.

Detectives Michael Oliver, Marc Cooper and Gescard Isnora were all acquitted in a 2008 trial of manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges stemming from the Bell shooting. The cops fired on Bell's lurching car after mistakenly believing someone inside had a gun and fearing that Bell was trying to run them down.

The U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn declined to prosecute the cops for civil rights violations.

The NYPD still has yet to decide whether to discipline a total of five officers involved in the shooting.

"The Sean Bell shooting highlighted the complexities our dedicated officers must face each day," he said. "The city regrets the loss of life in this tragic case, and we share our deepest condolences with the Bell family."

Federal Magistrate Roanne Mann signed off on the settlement during a marathon closed-door meeting with lawyers for the city, Paultre Bell and the two shooting survivors.

"The police were there doing their lawful duty. Bell was intoxicated and tried to run them over," Palladino said. "The taxpayers are now on the hook for $7 million. There's something seriously wrong with that picture."

I really like the fact that Japanese death row inmates do not know when they will be executed. The shock of being led out of their cells to be topped right away serves as a bit of retribution for the murder(s) they committed.

TWO KILLERS HANGED IN JAPAN’S FIRST EXECUTIONS UNDER NEW GOVERNMENT

Mail OnlineJuly 28, 2010

Two killers have been hanged in Japan’s first executions in a year.

Kazuo Shinozawa, 59, was sentenced to the death penalty after setting fire to a jewelry shop killing the six women inside in 2000.

Hidenori Ogata, 33, stabbed a man and woman to death in 2003.

They were both hanged today at the Tokyo Detention Center in the first executions to be carried out since the Democratic Party of Japan swept to power in September 2009.

Japan, along with the U.S., is one of the few industrialized countries that still has capital punishment.

Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, formerly a member of a group of politicians opposed to the death penalty, witnessed the executions.

Afterwards, she said she wanted a new study group to spur debate on the punishment, including whether it should be abolished in Japan.

She added: ‘Witnessing the executions with my own eyes made me think deeply about the death penalty.’

Ms Chiba left the anti-execution group to take the top ministry job under the new government, but she has continued to express reservations about the practice.

The country’s media organizations are not permitted to cover executions. But Ms Chiba said that should change.

Criminals can be left on death row for years in Japan, and executions - all carried out by hanging - are highly secretive.

Inmates do not know when they will be executed, while lawyers and family are only told after the fact.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which bills itself as a Muslim civil rights and charitable organization, filed a lawsuit against Anti-CAIR and others who charged that CAIR was an Islamic terrorist front organization.

From Anti-CAIR:

During pre-trial Discovery, ‘CAIR Agreed To Forever Drop All Of The Claims That Were In, Or Could Have Been In, Their Complaint. These Words [below] Were Never Found To Be False.’

Let there be no doubt that the Council on American-Islamic Relations is a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded by terrorists, and that CAIR wishes nothing more than the implementation of Sharia Law in America.

CAIR has proven links to, and was founded by, Islamic Terrorists. CAIR actively supports terrorists and terrorist-supporting groups and nations.

CAIR is an organization founded by Hamas supporters which seeks to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States and replace it with an Islamist theocracy using our own Constitution as protection.

CAIR was started by Hamas members and is supported by terrorist supporting individuals, groups and countries.

Since its founding in 1994, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired, and agreed with third parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine ("IAP"), the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ("HLF"), the Global Relief Foundation ("GRF"), and foreign nationals hostile to the interests of the United States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda, and to propagate radical Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, and certain of its officers, directors, and employees, have acted in support of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy.

*Senior CAIR employee Randall Todd Royer, a/k/a "Ismail" Royer, pled guilty and was sentenced to twenty years in prison for participating in a network of militant jihadists centered in Northern Virginia. He admitted to aiding and abetting three persons who sought training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan for the purpose of waging jihad against American troops in Afghanistan. Royer’s illegal actions occurred while he was employed with CAIR

*CAIR's Director of Community Relations, Bassem Khafagi , was arrested by the United States due to his ties with a terror-financing front group. Khafagi pled guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud, and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Khafagi’s illegal actions occurred while he was employed by CAIR.

*On December 18, 2002, Ghassan Elashi, founding board member of CAIR-Texas, a founder of the Holy Land Foundation, and a brother-in-law of Musa Abu Marzook , was arrested by the United States and charged with, among other things, making false statements on export declarations, dealing in the property of a designated terrorist organization, conspiracy and money laundering. Ghassan Elashi committed his crimes while working at CAIR, and was found Guilty.

*CAIR Board Member Imam Siraj Wahaj, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing, has called for replacing the American government with an Islamic caliphate, and warned that America will crumble unless it accepts Islam.

*Rabih Haddad served as a CAIR Fundraiser. Haddad was co-founder of the Global Relief Foundation ("GRF"). GRF was designated by the US Treasury Department for financing the Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations and its assets were frozen by the US Government on December 14, 2001.

Consistent with Hamas ideology, CAIR has served as a conduit for the distribution of materials and funds from foreign nationals to groups and institutions within the United States for the purpose of promoting radical Islam and Hamas ideology, and attacked Islamic clerics and scholars who reject radical Islam and the Hamas agenda.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Housrou Kedji's got 85 problems, but a bitch ain't one. Except for the bitch of shitting out 85 cocaine-filled condoms while law enforcement agents watched.

Kedji was acting very, very nervous as he boarded a plane at Bush Intercontinental June 29, according to court documents. "His heart was racing, his hands were shaking and he relayed conflicting stories about his whereabouts and activities in Houston," the criminal complaint says. (How they knew his heart was racing, it doesn't say.)

Kedji initially denied having swallowed any narcotics, but eventually admitted it. The ICE officials x-rayed him, took him to the bathroom and whoever drew the short straw stayed with him from 5:27 a.m. until 10:30 a.m.

"Kedji began expelling pellets," is the euphemism ICE uses; the first pellet tested positive for coke, and Kedji "continued expelling similar sized and shaped pellets until approximately 10:31 a.m., on July 21, when his x-ray was clear of pellets."

Kedji had told officers he had swallowed "about 80" condoms, so the five must have been a little lagniappe. Or maybe you lose count.

The crap-stained haul eventually amounted to about one kilogram of the drug, which was headed for Europe on an Air France flight.

Oliver Stone, who has rewritten history with his films and is courting Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, has joined Mel Gibson in railing against the Jews and declares that "Israel has fucked up United States foreign policy for years."

After getting showered with a shitstorm of criticism, Stone has now apologized for his remarks. However, his ‘what I meant to say’ apology rings hollow. Let’s face it, like Mad Max, deep down in his heart Stone simply hates Jews.

OLIVER STONE RAILS AGAINST JEWSJim Meyers

newsmax.comJuly 26, 2010

Director Oliver Stone declared in an interview that America’s focus on the Holocaust is due to "Jewish domination of the media," and said Jews are "the most powerful lobby in Washington."

The "Natural Born Killers" director also defended Hitler, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in his interview with Britain’s Sunday Times.

"Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support."

He also told interviewer Camilla Long: "Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people — 25 or 30 [million killed]."

Long then asked why there was such a focus on the Holocaust.

"The Jewish domination of the media," Stone responded.

"There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment. The most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has fucked up United States foreign policy for years."

Stone, who recently met with Ahmadinejad, said "Iran isn’t necessarily the good guy, but we don’t know the full story."

The "Platoon" director also said that if the U.S. pursues sanctions against Iran, "it’s going to be like North Vietnam again."

Stone has been promoting his pro-Hugo Chavez documentary "South of the Border." He called the Venezuelan president a "brave, blunt, earthy man."

The NewsBusters website said Stone’s interview is "shocking," and Britain’s Telegraph newspaper called it "poisonous rubbish," pointing out: "Far more Russians died in World War II than people from any other nation, but no individual group was targeted specifically for destruction like the Jews, and no group suffered as much proportionally to their size."

Earlier this year, Stone told a panel of TV critics that Hitler "is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it’s been used cheaply.

"We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’"

He also praised ruthless Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, saying "he fought the German war machine more than any person."

Of the two, only she knew that a gun was designed to be shot. And the moral of this story is that when you're done smacking your wife upside the head with your gun, be sure to lock it up!

RIO LINDA HUSBAND SHOT, WIFE INJURED DURING FIGHTBy Jason Kobely

News10/KXTVJuly 26, 2010

RIO LINDA, CA - A Rio Linda couple were treated for non-life threatening injuries after investigators say a husband pistol-whipped his wife before she grabbed the gun and shot him in the neck Monday evening, according to a Sacramento County Sheriff's spokesman.

The shooting happened inside a home on the 6900 block of 7th Avenue in Rio Linda around 9:30 p.m. Monday, Sacramento County Sheriff's Sgt. Tim Curran said.

An argument between the 44-year-old husband and his wife, 29, turned into a physical confrontation that ended in gunfire, Curran said.

After the husband pistol-whipped his wife in the head, the woman alledgedly grabbed the gun and shot her husband in the neck. Both were taken to a local hospital with superficial wounds, Curran said.

Curran said the woman was expected to face charges of domestic abuse and assault with a deadly weapon.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Despite the injuries she suffered at the hands of her husband, she was apparently arrested because he was shot from behind after the physical confrontation was already over. But when all is said and done, I'll bet the charges will be dropped because they love each other and he won't testify against her.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

One cop says "ABSOLUTELY NOT! Life imprisonment should mean..... life imprisonment, not what these scumbag bleeding heart liberals have reduced it to." Another cop says "He should die in prison. The liberal mindset never ceases to amaze me."

I strongly agree with them in this case – life in prison for killing a police officer should mean you don’t get out unless you’re a stiff in a pine box. What I don’t understand is how this cop killer was not sentenced to death in the first place?

Henry Michael Gargano was one of three heavily armed masked gunmen who robbed a bank. As they were leaving the bank they killed two cops who had responded to the bank robbery call and seriously wounded two others. All three were tried and convicted in Federal Court. They were found guilty of 2 counts of First Degree Murder and Bank Robbery and were each sentenced to 199 years in prison.

Now you can understand why cops hate liberals.

EDITORIAL: SHOULD LIFE SENTENCES BE ABOLISHED?A 77-year-old man who killed two cops will soon be released on parole, 43 years after his crime

By Walt Zlotow

Chicago Sun-TimesJuly 26, 2010

CHICAGO — Forget the death penalty, which is nearly a dead letter already.

The impending parole of 77-year-old Henry Michael Gargano after 43 years in federal prison for murdering Northlake policemen John Nagel and Anthony Sperri should spur a serious examination of the need to abolish life sentences. The U.S. Parole Commission has set Gargano's release for Sept. 3, citing his model behavior over the past 10 years, advanced age, poor health and little likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior. Opponents of Gargano's release include Officer Nagle's son, the deputy Northlake police chief and 6,000 supporters who signed petitions.

Gargano's incarceration has achieved the primary purpose of severe sentencing: removal of a violent monster from further opportunity to prey on society.

But needless continued imprisonment of hollow shells of one-time offenders should not be held hostage to relatives, colleagues or friends of victims decades later. If you asked what would really quench their thirst for justice, most might want to get the offender alone in a room and rip him apart. While that is understandable, it is not within the scope of the criminal justice system to authorize.

The lifelong warehousing of physically and mentally broken down old men shouldn't be as well.

On Thursday, a new Arizona law goes into effect that allows residents to carry concealed weapons without having to take any training or having g to obtain a CCW license. The anti-gun crowd is already yelling chicken-little by predicting that Arizona will become one big shootout at the OK corral.

No such thing will happen. My prediction is that Arizona will not return to the days of ‘The Wild West.’ The training required in those states that issue CCW licenses consists of a brief firearms course, shooting at a stationary target with a required minimum score, and instructions on when the law prohibits and allows shooting at a person.

As far as I’m concerned, the instructions on covering the laws is the only part of the training that has any value. Requiring a minimum score while shooting at a stationary target has no value because it has no relevance to the common confrontation where the adrenaline is flowing and the life-threatening adversary will most likely be moving.

PACKING HEAT IN AZ TO BECOME EASIER SOONNew law taking effect, allowing concealed weapons, no training

By Clayton R. Norman

Arizona Daily StarJuly 25, 2010

The Wild West is about to get wilder - on Thursday, Arizona will join Alaska and Vermont as one of the states with the country's most liberal gun laws.

Senate Bill 1108 removes the requirement that gun owners must be trained and licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

Arizona already allows for "open carry" - anyone not legally prohibited from possessing a firearm, such as convicted felons or those adjudicated mentally incompetent, can carry firearms in public as long as they are clearly visible. After Thursday, the requirement that weapons be displayed openly will be dropped, and anyone who is not a "prohibited possessor" will be able to carry concealed weapons.

The new law will not remove restrictions on places where it is forbidden to carry weapons, including schools, hydroelectric or nuclear power plants, polling places, federal buildings or businesses that have posted specific signs prohibiting weapons. Establishments that serve alcohol will still be "no-carry" zones for those without a concealed-weapons permit, and gun owners will not be allowed to drink alcohol while carrying a weapon.

Also, anyone who carries a concealed firearm over the state line will need a concealed-weapons permit to avoid violating other states' handgun laws.

Despite the caveats, the new law enhances Arizonans' freedom, said Charles Heller, a radio talk-show host.

Heller is a concealed-weapons course instructor and secretary of the Arizona Citizen's Defense League, a group whose efforts are directed at "expanding the rights of law-abiding gun owners." He says the freedom to carry weapons and defend oneself from attackers is at the heart of the law.

Once the law takes effect, he said, "Innocent people aren't going to be harassed because their purse got set down on a car seat (and accidentally covered an openly displayed weapon) or their shirttail came out" and covered an openly carried weapon.

Heller said the law also removes a barrier to people who might want to carry concealed weapons but don't have the time or money to invest in a training course. Currently, a CCW - carrying a concealed weapon - course costs about $80 plus another $60 to the Department of Public Safety to issue the permit.

There are nearly 160,000 active concealed weapons permits in Arizona, DPS statistics show. About 26,000 of them - 16 percent - are held in Pima County.

DPS spokesman Bart Graves said the agency expects a decrease in applications for concealed-weapons permits once the law goes into effect. But he, along with many supporters of the new law, said he hopes people who want to carry weapons will still seek out some form of training.

Houston, as you slap your arms, face and neck while trying to enjoy a sunset, reassure yourself that things could be worse: You could be in Florida or Louisiana.

Those two states are officially and somewhat scientifically more bug-infested than Texas, according to an industry survey.

The least buggiest state of all? South Dakota. (Actually, Washington, D.C., but that's not a state.

BASF, a chemical company that makes all sorts of bug-killing paraphenalia, conducted a survey and studied sales patterns to come up with their findings.

"The survey findings mirror what we see in real life," said Dr. Bob Davis, Chief Entomologist at BASF. "Ants are pervasive throughout the United States, while termites tend to be most prevalent in the West, South and Southeast."

After Texas, the top ten consisted of California [Where you find the most kooks.], Georgia, New York (lots of bedbugs), Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri and South Carolina.

Shockingly, BASF's study also showed that most homeowners would be better off hiring a professional exterminator, no doubt armed with industrial-strength BASF products, to handle the problem.

Sounds like a really great idea to me! It would be a real blessing not having to watch the local news anchors taking up a third of the scheduled news broadcast time with their incessant personal chit-chats. And it would also be great not having to watch the local reporter standing at the scene while reporting a story hours after the scene has been cleared.

As for the major network news desks, wouldn’t it be great not to have to watch Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric profusely thanking their NBC, ABC and CBS reporters for doing what they are being paid to do?

You know all those semi-sultry billboards with Channel 39's [news anchor] Mia Gradney asking you to watch her?

Forget them.

As we noted a month ago, Channel 39's owners, The Tribune Company, were looking to "bust the TV cliches" on its chain of local stations.

And Houston gets to go first. And, as first reported by Isiah Carey's Insite, the big game-changer will be.....No anchors!! And not really any reporters!!!

Sounds...odd? Not silly at all? Nah, it sounds pretty damn silly.

The Wall Street Journal talked to Tribune's CEO, who said this:

_We are about to launch a TV newscast in Houston that has no anchors, that has great pictures and great writing, but doesn't involve a set or a desk or anyone standing in the way of the picture. Now is it going to work? We're going to find out.

Our guess?

It's not going to work. Not that anyone will notice, given the anemic ratings Channel 39 gets.

The idea will be to use a lot of ambient sound, witnesses telling their story to (presumably) a one-person shooter/reporter/editor who is a college intern possibly a well-paid, experienced professional boldly breaking hoary TV-news tropes.

The experiment is due to start in the fall. Until then, the billboards are still operative, we guess.

"I didn't ask for any details", the lawyer interrupted. "Just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine!'?"

Shmuel said, "Vell, I just got Moishele into the car and vas driving down the road...."

"The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."

By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Shmuel's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his dog Moishele."

Shmuel thanked the Judge and proceeded. "Vell, like I vas saying, I just loaded Moishele, my lovely hundteleh (Yiddish for dog), into the car and vas driving him down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side. I vas thrown into one ditch and Moishele vas thrown into the other. I vas hurting, real bad and didn't want to move. However, I heard Moishele moaning and groaning. I knew he vas in terrible shape just by his groans. Den a Highway Patrolman came along. He could hear Moishele moaning and groaning so he vent over to him. After he looked at him, and saw vat terrible condition Moishele was in, he took out his gun and shoots him between the eyes. Den the Patrolman comes across the road, gun still in hand, looks at me and says, "How you feeling?"

Sen. James Webb, D-Va., , a highly decorated Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, has been very critical of Affirmative Action.

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Sen. Webb charged that affirmative action has ‘marginalized’ white workers. Here is what the Virginia Democrat wrote:

"Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers."

Previously, Webb had written in a 2000 Wall Street Journal book review that affirmative action "has within one generation brought about a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand."

I might add that quite a few whites applying for admission to our nation’s universities have also been marginalized by affirmative action programs designed to achieve diversity.

JORDAN ARRESTS VEGETARIANISM ACTIVIST CLAD ONLY IN LETTUCEActivist Ashley Fruno’s appearance in the Jabal Amman neighborhood of Amman attracts a large number of onlookers, causing traffic jams in the area

Deutsche Presse-AgenturJuly 25, 2010

Jordanian police on Sunday detained a Canadian woman as she walked down a fashionable street in the capital Amman wearing a gown made of lettuce leaves to urge Jordanians to become vegetarians, eye witnesses said.

Activist Ashley Fruno, a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wore a dress made of lettuce with a headscarf and held a sign reading "Let Vegetarianism Grow on You."

Her appearance in the Jabal Amman neighbourhood attracted a large number of onlookers and caused traffic jams in the area, forcing security men to intervene and take her to a nearby police station.

Fruno told reporters that she only wanted to "draw attention to the suffering" of the more than 120 million animals killed for their meat each year in Jordan.

"The consumption of meat, eggs and dairy products is the number one cause of climate change and a major contributor to resource depletion, pollution and even world hunger," she said.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

The State of Kookfornia is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and so Governor Conan the Barbarian wants to reduce the pay of state employees to that of the federal minimum wage. Many of Kookfornia’s cities are also on the verge of bankruptcy.

Bell, 10 miles south of Los Angeles, is a city of 38,000 that has a largely Latino population with a per-capita income of $24,800 in 2008. More than a quarter of its residents live below the poverty level. So how does Bell pay its top officials? Take a look at these annual salaries:

_Chief Administrative Officer (City Manager): $787,637

_Chief of Police: $457,000

_Assistant City Manager: $376,288

The police chief was hired just last year to lead a department of fewer than 50 officers. With his salary, he was being paid 50 percent more than the police chief of Los Angeles who earns an annual salary of $307,000 while leading a department of close to 13,000 officers.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that all of those three officials worked only PART-TIME.

On Thursday night, after the Los Angeles Times published those outrageous salaries, angry residents stormed the city council meeting and got the three officials fired. Now they are out to get rid of the mayor and the other four city council members as well.

Four of Bell’s five part-time council members, including the mayor, made sure they were paid handsomely by taking in almost $100,000 annually, mostly by serving on city-affiliated boards and commissions to which they had appointed themselves.

The kookiness of San Fransicko must have rubbed off on Oakland, its neighbor across the bay. On Tuesday, by a 5-2 vote, the Oakland city council approved the authorization of four huge pot factories that would supply its products to the city’s four ‘medical’ marijuana dispensaries.

Those pot pharmacies sold $28 million in marijuana last year, a sure sign that doctors were knowingly writing pot prescriptions to a lot of people with faked ailments.

The owners of Oakland’s pot dispensaries were behind the proposal while hundreds of pot growers opposed the pot factories, claiming that they would destroy the growers’ livelihood. Oakland’s business community supported the pot factory proposal because, according to the Los Angeles Times, "it could turn Oakland into the Silicon Valley of pot, create jobs and generate new tax revenues."

President Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency NOT to enforce federal drug laws that run counter to Kookfornia’s ‘medical’ marijuana laws. It's bad enough that they forbade the DEA from raiding pot pharmacies, but what if Obama and Holder order the DEA not to raid those marijuana factories?

Once those huge pot factories are established, the Obama administration can no longer find any justification for not enforcing the federal laws which make the manufacture and distribution of marijuana a felony. I believe that Obama and Holder would be committing an IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE if they would order the DEA not to shut those factories down and not to arrest the operators of these federally illegal facilities. If that would not constitute OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, nothing would.

This coming November, the people of Kookfornia will be voting on a referendum that, if approved, will legalize marijuana. My guess is that the referendum will be approved. If that does happen, Kookfornia will rue the day! Approval will not lead to the tax revenue bonanza trumpeted by the measure’s supporters. The backers of the referendum are the owners of the state’s marijuana dispensaries who stand to make billions of dollars when pot is legalized.

The legalization of marijuana will lead to an immediate increase in the use of pot. It will not destroy the black market because there will be a huge demand for pot by juveniles. There will be a remarkable increase in fatal automobile accidents caused by pot heads driving under the influence of marijuana.

And because MARIJUANA IS A GATEWAY DRUG, legalization will lead to a significant increase in the use of heroin, cocaine, meth and other illicit drugs. Once the use of marijuana becomes prosaic, pot heads – daily users as opposed to weekenders - will seek a better high by turning to more exotic drugs. That means the drug cartels will continue to thrive and continue on with their killing sprees.

President Barack Obama is visiting Texas -- including Houston -- next month to raise money for Democrats, but Bill White won't be appearing with him.

White, in fact, has gone out of his way to be snippy about it, telling USA Today "I was in the oil and gas business when he was a community organizer," which we're sure will win him a lot of votes from....from....people who hate Obama but love Democrats?

Anyway, there are plenty of good reasons why Bill White can't be bothered to be seen with Obama during the visit.

Among them:

1. HE HAS A HAIR APPOINTMENT THAT DAY.Just the usual, a little off the side and back and inside the ears. But it's a surprisingly time-consuming process. [White is bald.]

2. HE’S STILL NOT TOATLLY CONVINCED THAT OBAMA WAS BORN IN HAWAII.As some of our finest political minds have written: Why spend millions fighting the charges? Why not just release the birth certificate?

5. THE LUFKIN ROTARY CLUB IS PLAYING HARDBALL WITH THE SCHEDULING OF THEIR LUNCHEON. When they book a room, it stays booked. And you don't want to get on their wrong side. [Lufkin is a small East Texas city.]

Shea is referring to the Church's latest official directives on the ongoing sex abuse scandals, and they amaze him as much as they astound Maureen Dowd, who opined thusly in Sunday's New York Times:

_The casuistic document did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia; it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police; it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug; it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children; it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened.

_There is no moral awakening here. The cruelty and indecency of child abuse once more inspires tactical contrition. All the penitence of the church is grudging and reactive. Church leaders are merely as penitent as they need to be to protect the institution.

Shea is further astounded that the church is still trying to maintain that its canon laws hold equal weight to the laws of the secular societies in which the Church operates.

As he points out, last month the Pope was fuming in the aftermath of a Belgian police raid that was part of an investigation of priestly sex abuse. His Holiness grumbled that such crimes should be handled by both civil and canon law "respecting their reciprocal specificity and autonomy."

Not so, says Shea. He has a less murky solution.

"They should be turning these priests over to the police," he says. "Instead they muck around in these affairs with their internal investigations and pontifical secrets. They still think it is the Middle Ages. They still operate as if the French Revolution never happened and the Italian armies never reunified Italy in 1871."

But like Dowd, Shea is left even more agape by the fact that the Church appears to have gone out of its way to equate the ordination of women with pedophilia, citing both as equally reprehensible "graviora delicta" or grave sins.

"The ordination of women is not in the Decalogue nor is it a criminal offense, so to say it is a grave sin is just insane," Shea says. He sees it as a prime example of what he calls "narcissistic clericalism": a belief that purely doctrinal misdeeds like the ordination of women should be regarded as gravely as universally agreed-upon crimes like rape and bestiality.

The Chicago City Council's most powerful alderman has urged Mayor Richard Daley to pay off-duty cops to work on their days off to combat gang violence akin to "urban terrorism." He said that Daley's plan to ease a severe manpower shortage by hiring 100 more officers will take too long and fall far short.

What does he mean by "Urban Terrorism"? He means that Chicago’s gangs all have guns and are shooting up the city’s neighborhoods.

But all you good people who live in Chicago fear not. Your mayor will do everything in his power to circumvent the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms. Daley has declared that "As long as I’m mayor, we will never give up or give in to gun violence that continues to threaten every part of our nation, including Chicago."

Doesn’t it make you good citizens feel safer knowing that thanks to Mayor Daley you are prohibited from owning any handguns while countless gang members are free to run amuck shooting their guns off everywhere.

Friday, July 23, 2010

"All throughout Europe, a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of headscarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands -- or slaveholders, if you prefer -- walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. . . . These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These Muslim neighborhoods . . . are mushrooming in every city across Europe.These are the building blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city."

At the nature center where I volunteer, there is an old farmhouse. The other day, the head of our volunteer group was rummaging through the drawers of one of the original pieces of furniture in the house when he came across a stack of old letters. One of these letters was postmarked in Houston on June 5, 1923. That’s four years before I was born. The envelope contained a letter and a bill for $20.

This particular letter had a letter head of ‘Dr. Alvis E. Greer / Houston, Texas.’ The typed letter was an attempt by the good doctor to obtain payment of a ‘long past due’ bill from Mr. __________.

Today, when one hasn’t paid a bill he will get one or two notices that the payment is overdue. The second notice will probably say that the matter will be turned over to an attorney or a collection agency if payment isn’t forthcoming. (Often the attorney and collection agency are one and the same.) Then the bill collector phone calls start coming.

That’s not the way it was back in 1923 and that is why I have chosen to reproduce Dr. Greer’s letter.

737 Kress Bldg.May 28th, 1923

Mr. E. A. __________Kemah, Texas

My dear Mr. __________

Having received no response to statements sent you covering your account with me I am venturing to write you to ask if you cannot arrange to pay at least a small amount and to come in and make definite arrangements with me for further payments on the remainder in accordance with your ability to pay. You need to feel no embarrassment whatever in doing this, for it is my desire to treat you with the utmost consideration.

Please be assured that I have no disposition to unduly press you, nor to put you to any inconvenience, but the high expense of maintaining the character of service we strive for in this office makes it imperative for our fees be paid within a reasonable time, and as your account is long past due I feel that you should now make an effort to pay it, unless there exists extenuating circumstances which prevent it.

In any event, please let us get together and make a definite arrangement entirely satisfactory to you in order that you may be saved any further annoyance in this matter.

With kindest personal regards and the assurance of my highest consideration, I beg to remain,

Cordially yours./signed/ Alvis E. Greer

AEG-MP

What a very kind and considerate way of dunning a deadbeat for a ‘long past due’ bill. The letter is almost apologetic. That was then and this is now - them days are gone forever!

Remember a year ago when, before he had the facts, President Obama said that "the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home" following the arrest of his friend Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley? Well it has happened again. This time the president was not the only one who got his mental exercise by jumping to conclusions. He was joined by the Secretary of Agriculture and the NAACP.

It all started with a malicious posting on Andrew Breitbart’s conservative website, BigGovernment.com, that deliberately took a statement out of context that was made during a speech Shirley Sherrod gave in March to a local NAACP meeting in Georgia. The statement was cherry-picked from a video he posted of Sherrod telling the meeting about her initial reluctance 24 years ago to help a poor white farmer seeking government assistance.

On the face of it that sounded racist. However had Breitbart posted the video of her complete statement it would have been quite clear that Sherrod was merely pointing out how she managed to overcome her own racial biases as she advocated racial reconciliation. Breitbart claimed he was only trying to show that the NAACP was itself racist after the national chapter had accused the Tea Party of being racist.

Breitbart’s malicious posting took hold like a house on fire. The NAACP released a statement condemning Sherrod. She was forced to resign as the USDA’s Georgia director of rural development. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack went before the TV cameras to condemn her, as did White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

After the full video clip of her statement was released, Vilsack, Gibbs, Obama himself and the NAACP apologized profusely. Vilsadk offered Sherrod a better job overseeing civil rights in the USDA's Office of Outreach.

Vilsack has said repeatedly the decision to fire her was his own and his alone. After the White House denied any involvement in her firing, Sherrod told TV interviewers that several USDA officials told her that the White House had demanded her resignation.

In an excerpt of an ABC News interview broadcast Thursday, Obama said Vilsack was too quick to seek Sherrod's dismissal. "He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles," Obama said. This from the man who, in a rush to judgement, vilified the Cambridge police department and Sgt. Crowley before he knew the actual facts in the arrest of Professor Gates.

Breitbart extracted a 2.5 minute clip from a 45 minute videotape of Sherrod's appearance before the Georgia NAACP group. His deliberate malicious distortion of Sherrod’s remarks is an example of the poisonous garbage that keeps churning around the internet minute by minute. Any asshole can create havoc with a malicious and fabricated posting.

Sherrod is considering filing a lawsuit against Breitbart. I hope she sues the shit out of that dirtbag! By fabricating Sherrod’s ‘racism,’ Breitbart nearly destroyed the life of a good woman.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

The opponents of drug enforcement like to compare the failure of prohibition to the War on Drugs. That is not a valid argument! Prohibition was passed when the vast majority of Americans had long been drinking alcoholic beverages.

When the laws against marijuana, heroin, cocaine and other drugs were passed, relatively few Americans were using drugs. At the time, some Mexicans were using marijuana and heroin, some blacks were using heroin, and some Hollywood celebrities were using pot and cocaine.

As for whites, there was some use of marijuana and some were using downers such as Seconal (Reds), Nembutal (Yellow Jackets) and Amytal (Blues). That was before the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s lead to an explosion in the use of drugs attendant to the counterculture of the Viet Nam War protesters.

So the comparison of Prohibition to the War on Drugs just doesn’t hold any water. But if the prohibition spiel doesn’t work, then there’s always the race card.

Leonard Pitts is a very good columnist who writes through the eyes of a black man. Sometimes I agree with his views, sometimes I don’t. I certainly do not share his views about the War on Drugs. And I think it will be a terrible mistake for the voters of Kookfornia to legalize marijuana in this coming November’s referendum.

[Alice] Huffman, president of the California Conference of the NAACP, recently declared support for an initiative that, if passed by voters in November, will decriminalize the use and possession of marijuana. Huffman sees it as a civil rights issue.

… Huffman is standing firm, both in resisting calls for her head and in framing this as an issue of racial justice. There is, she notes, a pronounced racial disparity in the enforcement of marijuana laws.

[EDITOR: Huffamn, and Pitts are playing the race card against drug enforcement.]

She's right, of course. For that matter, there is a disparity in the enforcement of drug laws, period.

… though there are more than "four times" as many white drug users as black ones, blacks represent better than half those in state prison on drug charges, according to The Sentencing Project. The same source says that though two-thirds of regular crack users are white or Latino, 82 percent of those sentenced in federal court for crack crimes are black. In some states, black men are jailed on drug charges at a rate 50 times higher than whites.

[EDITOR: Some of these statistics are questionable. Even if 100 percent of the crack users were white or Latino, the fact is that blacks have cornered the market for the sale of crack. That’s whey they are imprisoned in disproportionate numbers.]

[Bishop Ron Allen, founder of a religious social activism group called the International Faith-Based Coalition] worries about a baby being born addicted to pot, but the likelier scenario is that she will be born to a father unable to secure a job so he can support her, an apartment for her to live in or an education so he can better himself for her — all because he got caught with a joint 10 years ago.

[EDITOR: ‘All because he got caught with a joint 10 years ago.’ What an absurd statement! No one went to prison 10 years ago for getting caught with a joint. He was probably caught selling hundreds, if not thousands of joints and the charges was plea bargained down form a sales to a possession case.]

It is a cruel and ludicrous predicament. And apparently Huffman, like a growing number of cops, judges, DEA agents, pundits and even conservative icons like the late William F. Buckley Jr. and Milton Friedman, has decided to call the War on Drugs what it is: a failure. It is time to find a better way, preferably one that emphasizes treatment over incarceration.

[EDITOR: I don’t consider the War on Drugs a failure. There would be 10 times as many or more users of debilitating drugs were in not for our drug enforcement efforts.]

You'd think that would be a no-brainer. We have spent untold billions of dollars, ruined untold millions of lives and racked up the highest incarceration rate in the world to fight drug use. Yet, we saw casual drug use "rise" by 2,300 percent between 1970 and 2003, according to an advocacy group called LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). And as drug use skyrocketed, we find that we have moved the needle on "addiction" not even an inch, up or down. All we have managed, and at a ruinous cost, is to relearn the lesson of 1933 when alcohol prohibition collapsed: You cannot jail or punish people out of wanting what they want.

[EDOTOR: OK, we’ve spent billions of dollars in the War on Drugs. Let’s say that we stop this war now. How many more billions of dollars would the increase in crime by drug users – regardless of whether drug use is legalized or not – cost us? How many more lives would be ruined? How many more innocent lives would be lost because so many more people are driving their cars under the influence of drugs?

‘We have ruined untold millions of lives.’ We haven’t done any such thing. We didn’t force anyone to use pot, coke, heroin, meth or any other illicit drugs. The dopers, knowing full-well that it was illegal, ruined themselves.

‘You cannot jail or punish people out of wanting what they want.’ Another absurd statement! People commit thefts, forgeries, burglaries, armed robberies, fraud, etc, because ‘what they want’ is money. According to Pitts’ way of thinking, doesn’t it stand to reason that we should stop jailing and punishing all those money-wanting thieves and swindlers?

Oh yes Ms. Huffman and Mr. Pitts, who do you think is behind that Kookfornia referendum to legalize marijuana? I’ve got news for you - it’s not the put users! It’s the medial marijuana dealers who are looking to make loads and loads of more money.]

Kookfornia, just like Illinois, is releasing violent inmates from prisons in order to reduce the state’s budget shortfalls. The difference is that the Kookfornia corrections officials do not release any information about inmates released early from prison.

NEW ILLINOIS LAW DEMANDS PUBLICATION OF PRISON INMATES RELEASED EARLYLast winter, more than 1,700 inmates – hundreds of them violent – were secretly released early from prison

Associated PressJuly 29, 2010

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — More information about Illinois inmates released from prison early must now be posted on the Corrections Department's website.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation Monday creating a "Community Notification of Inmate Early Release" hyperlink on the prison site so that taxpayers can more readily know who's getting out early.

The legislation was prompted by The Associated Press report last winter that more than 1,700 inmates — hundreds of them violent — had been secretly released early from prison after spending just days or weeks behind bars.

The identifying information must include the inmate's name, birth date, physical characteristics, address, offense and more. It must be posted within three days of a prisoner's release.

COFFEE FROM CAT DROPPINGS CLEAN ENOUGH FOR MUSLIMSIndonesia’s top Islamic council says that civet coffee extracted from civet cats’ dung can be consumes as long as beans, eaten by nocturnal critters, were washed

Associated PressJuly 20, 2010

Indonesia's top Islamic body declared Tuesday that Muslims can drink civet coffee - the world's most expensive coffee, which is extracted from the dung of civet cats.

A preacher recently suggested the beverage might not be "halal" - or religiously approved - because its unusual provenance makes it unclean. But after a long discussion Tuesday, the influential Indonesian Ulema Council said that the coffee, known locally as Kopi Luwak, could be consumed as long as the beans were washed.

Kopi Luwak, which takes it name from the Indonesian word for civets, is made from hard beans that have been eaten by the nocturnal critters and then fermented in their stomachs before being pooped out and roasted. Civet cats are mongoose-like animals.

It's highly prized for its smooth flavor and bitterless aftertaste, sometimes fetching well over $200 a pound ($440 per kilogram) online.

"Kopi Luwak can be declared 'halal' after passing through a washing process," said Maruf Amien, acting head of the council. "Producing, selling and drinking it is allowed."

In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, Kopi Luwak is produced in the main Java island, Sumatra and Sulawesi. It is also found under different names elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Only 450 kilograms are said to be produced annually worldwide.

The Ulema Council has often issued fatwas, or edicts, including several controversial rulings against smoking and yoga. Its edicts are not legally binding, but many devout Muslims abide by them.

Merced police say a 25-year-old parolee was captured Saturday morning after trying to burglarize patrol cars at the department's south station.

The incident was reported around 4 a.m. at the building, located at 470 W. 11th St. Officers were alerted after hearing a patrol car siren in the station's parking lot and found Isaiah Coronado inside the car, according to Lt. Tom Trindad.

Apparently, while inside the patrol car, Coronado had turned on its lights and siren by mistake. He had already broken into two cars and tried stealing a shotgun, but wasn't able to remove the weapon from the locked rack, police said.

Coronado damaged two other cars in the parking lot by kicking in the door of one and smashing the window of the other, Trindad said. Police believe he also tried to enter the south station but was unsuccessful.

Police say Coronado injured himself on broken glass while breaking into one of the cars and was taken to the hospital for treatment. Afterward, he was taken to Merced County Jail and booked on suspicion of a parole violation, auto burglary, tampering with a vehicle, malicious mischief and participation in a criminal street gang.

Paul, the Genius German Octopus correctly picked the last eight winners of the recent World Cup soccer finals. I am hoping that my stockbrokers will offer the cephalopod a job. Paul certainly couldn't do worse than their "experts," and they wouldn't have to pay him nearly so much. The only difference between Bernie Madoff and my broker is that Bernie Madoff was a crook. My guy loses the same amount of money; he just doesn't steal it. I was planning on using that money for food and medicine during my declining years, which have already started, according to my friends. I know that they are my friends because total strangers wouldn't say such hurtful things.

Paul the Octopus picked the winners by pulling food out of containers marked with the flags of one team or another. I have not figured out how my money managers pick the losers, but they have been on an uncanny streak for almost three years now. Maybe they hide random company logos in expensive Wall Street restaurants, and whichever one the stockbroker eats on his expensed lunch that day becomes his pick. It replaces the system they used before, which was racing cockroaches. For this they take a 2-percent management fee.

It's not just stocks; experts who predict all manner of things fill up huge hunks of TV time. Like my stockbroker, they are usually wrong. Paul the Octopus could replace them and the thousands of people who make a career out of picking things before they happen. Who will win the best actress Oscar? Who will the candidate pick for vice president?

Who will win the World Series? Who will win the Super Bowl? Who will the Bachelorette pick? Who will win the Kentucky Derby? Someone even prognosticated how many correct predictions Paul the Octopus would make. Can he do it one more time? Sure, we could just wait until these events happen and then we would know the results, but that seems to be out of fashion.

For months people will debate who will win the Oscars. The day after we know for sure who won, the discussion is over. We hear the predictions ten times more than we hear the facts. It's no wonder that some people probably still believe Barack Obama picked Hillary Clinton or Osama bin Laden to be his vice president, as it was often predicted that he would.

It's kind of odd that when a human predictor makes a mistake, he or she gets to keep predicting. Yet if Paul the Octopus missed his first two predictions, he'd be back in the tank where he came from, hiding in an ink cloud of shame. If an expert is always wrong, is he still an expert? Shouldn't there be some minimum standard for predicting -- like getting something right every once in a while? Even a flipped coin can get things right five out of ten times, so if you're an expert and you can't get one out of ten things right, you lose your License to Predict and should stop making TV appearances. You should stop managing stock portfolios and stop talking about politics. If you have no track record, get off the track.

When a politician does something unsavory, when an actor is taped making a racist phone rant, when an athlete is caught cheating, they pay a price. Don't believe the old saying, because there is such a thing as bad publicity. Don't take my word for it? Then talk to Tiger Woods' accountant. But experts never pay a price for being wrong. Because who knows more about being wrong than the experts? They're experts at it.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

For weeks, the Republicans have been salivating over the prospect of taking back control of the House of Representatives and even the possibility of regaining control of the Senate. But, not so fast!

VP Joe Biden thinks the Democrats will do quite well in November. During an interview on ABC's This Week, Biden declared, "I don't think the losses are going to be bad at all. I think we're going to shock the heck out of everybody... I am absolutely confident when people take a look at what has happened since we've taken office in November and comparing it to the alternative, we're going to be ... in great shape."

Biden believes "what the president believes [is that] we're going to win the House and we're going to win the Senate. We're not going to lose either one of those bodies." Biden admitted that the public has failed to recognize Obama’s accomplishments but he predicted that by November the voters would see the Republicans for what they are: The party of "Repeal and Repeat" that wants to repeal the positive accomplishments of the Obama administration and repeat the failed polices of the Bush administration.

Biden has a good point. The Democrats have labeled the Republicans as "The Party of No" because of their partisan opposition to all of the major bills – like Health Care Reform and Financial Regulation – introduced by the Democrats. And now the Republicans are opposing the extension of unemployment benefits for 2.5 million people whose benefits have expired but who are still out of work.

While it is true that the Republicans offered numerous amendments to the Health Care and Financial bills that were rejected by the Democrats, they never did come forth with a complete package of Health Care and Financial regulation proposals. To the public it seems as if the only solution the Republicans have for the nation’s problems is to cut spending and reduce taxes.

And while the public will come to rue the adverse effects of the Democratic bills, that will not happen before the elections. For instance, cuts in Medicare benefits and increased taxes to pay for all those new programs are eventually ‘going to shock the heck out of everybody’ and especially out of us seniors who subsist on fixed incomes.

Obama is losing the crucial independent voters, but could the Republicans be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by their obstinate partisanship?

But suppose the Democrats do lose Congress? That could actually help Obama’s re-election chances. Remember that Harry Truman won re-election in 1948 by attacking the Republican-controlled ‘Do Nothing Congress.’ And Charles Krauthammer writes that "For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign."

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Obama is actually hoping the Republicans will retake control of Congress in November. Then, in 2012, he can blame the Republicans for the failure of Congress to pass an energy bill, a comprehensive immigration bill and other measures favored by his administration. That would enable Obama to recapture the independent vote, thus enhancing his chances of getting re-elected.

The New Black Panther Party, a poor imitation of the original Black Panthers, has popped up all over the country, including here in Houston.

Joseph C. Phillips, a black columnist, is the author of "He Talk Like A White Boy." Here is what Phillips had to say about the New Black Panther Party in a recent Townhall.com column:

The small membership of the Panthers routinely attempts to transport themselves back to 1968. They have appropriated the look of Huey P. Newton and borrowed their rhetoric from Elijah Muhammad and early Malcolm X. In addition, other than standing on the street corner yelling at people, or appearing on Fox News, they appear to do very little actual work.

They also share the opinion of most New Leftists that because of slavery, the American founding was illegitimate; that because of racism, American values are bankrupt, and that so long as any measure of racism continues to exist in American society, that will be proof that blacks remain the victims of an inherently white, racist system.

The Palestinian Authority has put into the deep freeze American efforts to coax it into direct talks with Israel on its being recognized as a new Arab country within Israel’s borders. Besides rejecting U.S. President Barack Obama’s direct appeal for direct talks, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas now demands that international forces be placed in Judea and Samaria before direct talks can begin.

Abbas’s added his new condition in an interview Saturday with the Jordanian al Ghad newspaper. "Israel must accept that the Palestinian territory in question be that of the 1967 borders and with the presence of a third party," he said.

Abbas' new condition was made the same day he and U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell talked for three hours in Ramallah, where the PA leader held by his previously-stated determination not to budge from his demands.

A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by. The jet jockey decided to show off.

The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, 'watch this!' and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb. He then finished with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that?

The C-130 pilot said, 'That was impressive, but watch this!' The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 pilot came back on and said: 'What did you think of that?'

Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, 'What the fuck did you do?'

The C-130 pilot chuckled. 'I stood up, stretched my legs, walked to the back, took a leak, then got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll.’

The moral of this story is …..

When you are young and foolish, speed and flash may seem a good thing!

Woman: His body parts are in plastic bags in the trunk if you want to see.

The Officer looks at the woman and slowly backs away to his car and calls for back up. Within minutes 5 police cars circle her car. A police sergeant slowly approaches her car, clasping his half-drawn gun.

Sergeant: Ma'am, could you step out of your vehicle please?

The woman steps out of her vehicle and asks: Is there a problem sir?

Sergeant: One of my officers told me that you have stolen this car and murdered the owner.

Woman: Murdered the owner?

Sergeant: Yes, could you please open the trunk of your car.

The woman opens the trunk, revealing nothing but an empty trunk.

The sergeant shakes his head and asks: Is this your car, ma'am?

Woman: Yes, here are the registration papers.

The sergeant is quite stunned and says: One of my officers claims that you do not have a driver’s license.

The woman digs into her handbag, pulls out her license and hands it to the sergeant.

The Sergeant examines the license and looks rather puzzled. After a moment he says: Thank you ma'am, one of my officers told me you didn't have a license, that you stole this car, and that you murdered and hacked up the owner.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Paco notes that state corrections officials said Thursday that an inmate’s street gang affiliation is not considered when determining how to classify and monitor parolees like the one who allegedly shot an LAPD officer during a traffic stop in the San Fernando Valley. This causes me to wonder under what rock those officials crawled from?

LAPD STEAMED OVER CDCR PAROLE POLICYBy Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blogJuly 15, 2010

The LAPD has sent a formal letter to CDCR asking just what in the hell is going on.

Specifically, they are pissed over the case of Javier Joseph Rueda, 28, of Panorama City. He tried to kill two LAPD officers over the weekend. They are trying to figure out how he got early release and why he was classified as a low-level, non-violent, non-revocable parolee.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck expressed his concern over how Rueda managed to achieve this status after two years of a ten-year sentence. Specifically, Chief Beck asked, "If you determine that there were issues regarding Mr. Rueda’s status, we would appreciate your feedback on how we can work with you to ensure that incidents of a similar nature do not occur." I’m sure he is waiting patiently and expectantly for a response letter from [Corrections Secretary] Matthew Cate.

Paul Weber, President of the LAPPL (Los Angeles Police Protective League, their collective bargaining agent) was a little less PC and more direct. "We have repeatedly warned for months that its only a matter of time before the Department of Corrections ‘non-revocable’ parole policy - which pushes prisoners back onto the streets and prevents their return to prison - enables a parole to kill a police officer or an innocent member of our community." It should be noted that in the recent past a LAPD and LASO officer have been murdered by a non-violent, non-serious (but not non-revocable) parolee, as has a 4-year old boy.

Rueda was terminally rehabilitated by the cops, both of whom were hurt in the exchange of shots. Rueda, aka Ghost and Jayboy, was a member of the Vineland Boys gang. He had been doing a ten-year stretch for evading an officer, car theft, possession of a silencer and possession of a controlled substance while armed. He began the sentence in 2007 and got out in less than 3 years.

The LAPD and LAPPL also have issues with the new and improved, computerized threat assessment tool currently in use. Of the first 600 felons classified using this system, 240 had to be reclassified as a higher risk. As far as I know, not all of them have yet been officially contacted and placed back on supervised status.

Weber also said, "We are putting the CDCR on notice now-don’t you dare come to an officer’s funeral and tell us how sorry you are that one of your parolees, who should have been in prison, killed a police officer. Your chance to make amends is now, when you can correct the problem before someone else is hurt or killed and scrap a policy that puts officers and the public in danger."

The problem with Weber’s obviously heart-felt statement is that the CDCR parole police is not even remotely interested in public safety or officer safety, it is interested in controlling institution population and saving money, or at least shifting costs away from the state. It is nice, however, to note that in organizations where the chiefs and the grunts all have similar background the chiefs and grunts tend to feel the same way about many things. Their organization is run by a cop, who is also a competent administrator. Our organization is run by a lawyer, whose chief advisors and deputies are lawyers. It makes all the difference in the world.

UPDATED INFORMATION: On July 14, the same day the LA Chiefs letter and the LAPPL press release came out, a memo to all Region III [parole] staff went out advising caution when interacting with parolees identified as Vineland Boys street gang members. Perhaps Region III is acknowledging that the RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] case against the Vineland Boys and the murder and series of attempted murders of police officers may have upped the ante a bit. Better late than never I guess. I wonder if the new and marvelous computer threat assessment tool will be updated, revised, scrapped or whatever?

Now if we only had a federal judge with the balls to order Mayor Richard Daley and the Chicago City Council to rescind the city’s gun ban and order all of them to complete a college level course on the U.S. Constitution with an emphasis on the Second Amendment.

From Dudley Brown, Executive Director of the National Association for Gun Rights:

I’ve got exciting news to share with you.

In Iowa, a Federal judge has ordered the Osceola County Sheriff to issue a concealed handgun permit to a political activist and take a remedial course on Free Speech and the 1st Amendment.

Sheriff Weber testified that he denied Dorr’s permit application because of Dorr's political activities and views -- the same grassroots activism that gun owners like you participate in with the National Association for Gun Rights.

In the ruling Federal District Judge Mark Bennett said: "In denying Paul a concealed weapons permit, Sheriff Weber single-handedly hijacked the First Amendment and nullified its freedoms and protections. Ironically, Sheriff Weber, sworn to uphold the Constitution, in fact retaliated against a citizen of his county who used this important freedom of speech and association precisely in the manner envisioned by the founding members of our nation ..."

As a result of his outrageous infringement upon Mr. Dorr’s rights, Sheriff Weber was ordered by Judge Bennett to complete a college level course on the U.S. Constitution, "including -- at least in part -- a discussion of the First Amendment." Sheriff Weber is also required to file an affidavit proving his completion of the course with the court.

This is a huge victory for the right-to-carry in Iowa.

Congratulations are due to Paul Dorr and Iowa Gun Owners for this important victory.